Universalis
Tuesday 7 May 2024    (other days)
Tuesday of the 6th week of Eastertide 

Using calendar: England - Portsmouth - Isle of Wight. You can change this.

The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Year: B(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: White.

Other saints: St John of Beverley (-721)

Hallam, Hexham & Newcastle, Leeds, Middlesbrough
John of Beverley was born at Harpham a few miles from Driffield on the Yorkshire Wolds. He studied at Canterbury under St Adrian, the African-born abbot of the famous monastery there, who was a great scripture scholar and a fine teacher of Greek and Latin. When John returned to the North, he entered the double monastery at Whitby under the remarkable abbess, St Hilda, who had a great influence on many of the outstanding religious people of her time.
  In 687 John was consecrated Bishop of Hexham in succession to Bishop Eata, one of the twelve disciples of St Aidan and the teacher of St Cuthbert. During his time at Hexham, John ordained the future St Bede as priest. He was a good pastoral bishop, a man who loved the Scriptures, and a patient teacher. Like many of his contemporaries he also had a deep seated need for prayerful solitude and used to retire to a quiet place on the banks of the Tyne for prayer and the study of Scriptures, especially during the season of Lent. In 705 he was appointed to the See of York in succession to St Bosa, himself a former monk of the monastery at Whitby. John remained in the diocese for 12 years but the call of solitude remained strong, and four years before his death he retired to Beverley to a religious house he founded there.
  John died on 7 May 721, having worked for more than thirty years as a bishop. His shrine became famous up and down the country and was considered to be one of the chief places of devotion in England for many years.
  Many miracles of healing are ascribed to John, and the popularity of his cult was a major factor in the prosperity of Beverley during the Middle Ages. He was celebrated for his scholarship as well as for his virtues. He was canonized in 1037. In 1541, his shrine was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII. About a hundred years later workmen discovered a vault under the floor of the Minster’s nave. The inscription on it indicates that the contents contained the relics of St John. In 1738, when the present Minster floor was laid, these relics were disinterred and replaced in the same position with an arched brick vault over them. The inscription on the tomb now reads:
HERE LIES
THE BODY OF SAINT JOHN OF BEVERLEY
FOUNDER OF THIS CHURCH
BISHOP OF HEXHAM A.D. 687-705
BISHOP OF YORK A.D. 705-718
HE WAS BORN AT HARPHAM
DK, Middlesbrough Ordo

Other saints: Bl. Albert of Bergamo OP (1214 - 1279)

7 May (where celebrated)
Lay Dominican and Husband.
  Blessed Albert was born in Valle d’Ogna near Bergamo in 1214. As a married man he was known for his generosity to the poor, a virtue for which his wife reproached him. Upon the death of his wife, being childless, he left his father’s farm and went to Cremona where he lived in poverty. His poverty was a witness to a group of heretics there who boasted of their own poverty. Attracted by the life of Saint Dominic he joined the Brothers of Penance, which later became the Order of Penance of Saint Dominic, and lived at the Dominican priory. He died on May 7, 1279.

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: St Cyril of Alexandria (370 - 444)

Cyril was born in 370 . He entered a monastery, became a priest and in 412 succeeded his uncle as Bishop of Alexandria. Alexandria was the largest city in the ancient world. Rather like Los Angeles, it was a sprawling mixture of races and creeds; and it was a byword for the violence of its sectarian politics, whether of Greeks against Jews or of orthodox Christians against heretics.
  In 428, Nestorius, the new Patriarch of Constantinople (and hence one of the most important bishops in the world) made statements that could be interpreted as denying the divinity of Christ. The dual nature – human and divine – has always been hard for us to accept or understand, and if it seems easy it is only because we have not thought about it properly. Those who dislike problems have had two responses: to deny the human nature of Christ or to deny his divinity: and either leads to disaster, since both deny the Incarnation and hence the divinisation of human nature.
  Cyril fought strongly against the teachings of Nestorius and took the lead at the Council of Ephesus, plunging into the turbulent politics of the time and defending the Catholic faith through to its ultimate victory.
  Cyril wrote many works to explain and defend the Catholic faith. He died in 444.

Liturgical colour: white

White is the colour of heaven. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Not that you will always see white in church, because if something more splendid, such as gold, is available, that can and should be used instead. We are, after all, celebrating.
  In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)Acts 4:11-12
This Jesus is ‘the stone rejected by you the builders, but which has proved to be the keystone.’ For of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved.

Noon reading (Sext)(1 Peter 3:21-22)
Now you are saved by baptism. This is not the washing off of physical dirt but a pledge made to God from a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has entered heaven and is at God’s right hand.

Afternoon reading (None)Colossians 3:1-2
Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand. Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth.

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